


Intuition (the What Will Always Materialize hook)

by Maerhys



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode: s05e03 Free to Be You and Me, F/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-04
Updated: 2010-10-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 20:20:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5640586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maerhys/pseuds/Maerhys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The best games often employ confidence, man. </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intuition (the What Will Always Materialize hook)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [We Will Not Regret The Past, Nor Wish To Shut The Door On It](https://archiveofourown.org/works/210417) by [ratherastory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratherastory/pseuds/ratherastory). 



> Written for the third round of Kamikaze Remix. Coda to 5.3. This story fulfills _Oklahoma_ for my 50 States of Supernatural challenge.

After the bar brawl with too much spilled out between them, Sam ushers her back to the Grand Plains Motel, nods to the clerk behind the splintering front desk, and then adds a wink, hoping to convey that he has a lady friend and they are going to his room. Do not disturb. He's never done this before, taken a stranger back to a motel room where all of his research is spread out over the bedside tables and casings and clips take up the small space in the kitchenette where groceries other than dry soup and a case of Pepsi belong.

He's grasps her hand, and it's small but indelicate. Calluses dot the pads of her fingers and there's a healing burn on her palm — hazards of the job, he supposes. He smiles back at her, wide and unassuming, dimples digging deep into his cheeks, the baby face, the family business face.

Lindsay follows along after him, confused and intrigued, with a dozen double-barreled questions on her tongue. Demons. Apocalypse. Business. And the red drug — go juice? Sure as hell couldn't have been blood, no matter how sluggish and red it looked, because he is no sparkly type even if he isn't hard on the eyes. Must be a street name out of a city bigger than Garber, she imagines. She had spent her teens stoned out on paint thinner before she got a hold of the bottle and realized she couldn't drink all day if she didn't start in the morning, and so she did. Her daddy hadn't cared as long as she replaced his fifth of gin and the ubiquitous six-pack of Bud Light. Later that summer, he only had shrugged when he caught her at the mini-mart blowing the counter boy so that she could get replacement liquor and beer because she was only seventeen with six dollars in her jeans' pocket.

Sam's an addict as surely as she is, and she feels the tension roiling through him, and she guesses that he's pissed off that he didn't take the out his colleagues gave him. A slip when someone's pouring your poison down your throat is not even skirting the edge. Even Erika would agree with her there. Maybe she should have called Erika, doubtful that he has someone in town to talk to other than her, and she's pretty sure this is out of her league. Designer drugs and crazy coworkers with knives. Jesus Christ, what has she stumbled into this time? Her daddy would say, She's gotten too lippy; too grown for her own good sense.

They trip down the long corridor to a lacquered door with the room number askew on one nail. If they agree it looks like the start of a bad skin flick, neither mention it. Sam pulls her inside with a welcoming wave of his other hand and she retreats to the corner by the table and chair, glancing at the sheaf of papers, neatly stacked next to a top-of-the-line laptop.

"You don't have to play me, you know." It sounds rather coy although she was going for hard and reliable. He could tell her things, if he wants to. She's willing to listen even if her intuition is picking at the rational part of her brain that this ridiculous and halfway to crazy. She stills, she stays.

He sits down heavily on the made-up bed. Hospital corners, wrinkle-free by way of military precision that no minimum wage motel maid would bother with when she has twenty other rooms to clean. "I know, I just didn't want to involve anyone else in this. I told you that I've done things, hurt people." He lingers on that last word as if it's singular and he means someone specific.

She snorts because does he really think she can be placated by a few replayed phrases from a salad supper at the local steakhouse? He looks up at her, with earnest confusion and she tones it down a notch.

"I've been there too, you know. Tempted. Can't say I've ever had gin poured down my throat while on the wagon, but this doesn't seem normal any way that you wanna cut it," she says, sits down in the chair beside the table.

He smoothes out his face until he can paste on innocent, all liquid eyes and self-contempt. It's rusty; he's not played this role in years. Dean is better with marks, his confidence as easy as slipping on that old leather jacket after years of slipping out between the rock and an even harder place. He looks her over, searching out the pressure points, where the foundation may be a bit weak.

"No, it's not. I mean, I told you that I left working with my brother," he says, tries to hide the honest hurt that burns his throat when he says anything about Dean these days. "And, I did, but not everyone knew why. The guys tonight, we're all in the same business—"

"And what business is that by the way? Because that was some violent shit y'all pulled out." Lindsay shivers involuntarily as her body remembers the knife and handcuffs sliding over her skin.

"Hunting. Bounty hunting," Sam corrects. "We're bounty hunters, so you can see that a junkie can't get very far without being found out in our line of work." He sees her head bob slowly, and there's the hook. Just enough truth mixed with fiction and it's not all that strange now. Plausible. "But we've all got collections to make and get in on time and with me quitting to get sober, it put other people in danger. Other hunters."

"So much danger that they're talking demons and apocalypses?" She's not convinced that it was all hyperbole.

Sam curls his fists into the hem of his tee-shirt and pulls it off along with the loose button down in one swoop. He stretches, consciously self-conscious, plays the vulnerability card. Jess had always turned maternal the moment she saw a scar and he has a helluva lot more of them now than five years ago. Of course, Lindsay is not Jess. He hadn't taken his clothes off with Jess until they were three months on, and he's known Lindsay for about a week. Still, he watches her eye the tattoo and move from his pectoral down to his belly button with her sharp eyes.

"Sorry," he apologizes, "just want to get this blood off of me and into something cleaner." He turns when she nods, and he smiles at the wall of iron lace behind the bed. Sam rifles through the bedside drawer and continues. "The demons and apocalypse thing is just something we use for code when we're talking with each other. Serial killers and rapists get to you on the job, seem inhuman at times. You've seen the news with the string of crimes, and we're after a bunch of those guys, the ones wrecking towns and hurting people. Seems as close to an apocalypse as most of us have seen." Shutting the drawer, he crouches down at the side of the bed and pulls a shirt out of his duffel bag. He turns around to see that her features have warmed and she's nodding.

"I can see how that might drive you out of your head for some peace. I mean, that's how I used. I needed my head to shut up." It's true enough for most addicts, she knows that, but Sam seems to be running from something other than his work or even himself. "And my family too. Your brother make it worse, that why you needed to get away? My dad kicked me out after a while—"

This time Sam cuts her off, dragging a hand through his hair, slicking the sweat into it so that it stays out of his eyes. Hard eyes, sharp as a broken off beer bottle and glistening the same amber color. "No, it wasn't like that." It's soft, not much bark but Lindsay feels the bite. She crossed a line, and she starts to apologize when he grins back at her. "Sorry, just a sore spot. We're close, you know? I wanted to make him proud of me, have his back, and it just didn't work out that way."

"Sam, you're smart and you have a sense of humor, and you're obviously strong and committed to sobriety if you spit out that drug. I think your brother would have to be proud of you for getting it together. We can all be forgiven." She believes every word because she believes in working for the things worth having while not forgetting why she's working for it all. A big book true believer, Erika tells her. "Anyone who can finish the New York Times crossword gets my vote for someone smart enough to stay the course."

"Thanks. It means a lot that you're here, that you didn't call the police on us, and let me handle it. Even though you had every right to say fuck it and haul ass out of there and away from me."

Lindsay rolls her eyes. She can feel the conversation winding down but she's not ready to be shown the door just yet. Maybe for Sam's sake and maybe because she's thinking a little too much about the 24-hour gas station down the block that always has a bottle of well whiskey on the shelf for a few dollars. "I figured you were the honest type after you spilled your secrets."

Sam offers her a lop-sided smile. He wonders if she can even guess at the number of secrets he carries, bears them with an ease that scares him. "Can I get you something? I don't have much... some instant tomato rice soup and or a soda?" He stutters a bit at offering her the soup, strangely willing to go forward with their game but not all that happy to make her up a packet of dehydrated pellets flavored with red water. Another part of his life that is just his— and Dean's — and this game can be played without the foreplay. He stalks toward her, tosses the shirt on the table before she answers, and draws her up and close against his chest.

Lindsay's tried to pretend that she's not been waiting but now they both know that would be a lie. Sam lets her push him down on the bed and crawl up his legs until she's straddling his hips. She unbuttons his jeans and slips off her shirt as he reaches over to turn off the bedside lamp.

— — —

Sam dreams of Jess as the devil and Lucifer wearing a suburbanite's body, a tumble of images somersaulting into something vague but telling. He's the devil's true host. Lucifer, tells him humbly, almost apologetically, that Sam will say yes, and that the apocalypse is out of their hands. None of them are so far from fate.

He awakes in a pool of sweat, sticky with the taste of Lindsay on his mouth, and the smell of latex laced with perfume. She's spread out on the side of the mattress he's not used to sharing with anyone these past few months. It's a startling picture, but he eases out of bed without waking her and begins to pile the laptop and folders into this backpack after shucking on a pair of jeans and the tossed tee-shirt from a few hours before. It's almost 4AM and he needs to tell Bobby. And Dean. He pounds his fist lightly against the table as he pockets his phone.

She tosses in the bed sheets, pulls the velveteen coverlet over her chest as she struggles to sit up. "Leaving already, Keith Sam?" He's spooked but covers it before she calls him on it.

"Just Sam, Lindsay. I gotta go, get back to work. I think last night proved to me that I am strong enough to do what I need to do, prove to my brother that I am good for the family business." He's sick with the need to call Dean, but masks it by fumbling with the soup. He stuffs the three leftover packets into the backpack's side compartment. Sam leaves the soda.

Lindsay stares on at him. She expected this was going to be a one-time thing, but not that he'd fuck and run. "A'right. I know how it is when you have to do what your gut tells you to do."

"Yeah," he says, toeing on the unlaced boots. "I, um, always knew that I'd go back to him, to our job. We're family. I think I have a better chance of staying clean with him."

It's a few words strung together, an explanation that she shouldn't read into because she knows nothing about his nameless brother or their relationship, but the slew of reasons cut into her. The words may as well be foreign because they don't share a common definition between the two of them. Can't say she ever felt that way about her family, or even Erika.

"I get it," she says, even though she doesn't.

"I have the room through the week so don't rush if you don't want to," he mumbles. Sam's never been good at this part of the morning after.

She shrugs and waves him away. He hefts his duffel bag over one shoulder and the backpack over the other, phone out and a name highlighted to dial with the press of a button. Lindsay snugs down into the worn red velvet, just another minute to get the sleep out of her system. The toss of the key on the table, the snick of the dead-bolt auto-locking as the door closes sounds about right.

Sam makes it the stairway before he sighs in relief. Convinced. Game over. He thumbs the send button on his phone and it rings. He's walking again, to any bus stop or parking lot where he can hot wire something on the fly. Four rings and then pick up, but Sam's long resolved that this is what he needs to do, intuition sure as one of his old visions.

"Bobby, it's me. I need some new ID cards. The usual." Pause, beat, breathe. "Yeah, I'm back in."


End file.
